What Kind of Dog Jumps Higher Than a Building?

Taylor Swift says if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. I think she’s been to carnivals. 

To paraphrase her, I think also that if you ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers. Ignore all the teachers who ever told you there were no stupid questions. There are.

Recently, there have been Questions raised in the Mizo Christian world that has upset church members. I don’t think I would call them stupid questions at all but I know also that a lot of people call them things close to blasphemy. Which I don’t think they are, at all.

Religion should ideally be able to answer questions of the Faith but often religion hates when hands are raised.

It is in the questions you ask.

I know a lot of people for whom faith is not a difficult task. They simply say they believe, no questions asked. But there are others who need more. It’s not a failure on anyone’s parts. It’s just the degree of inquisitiveness of a mind, the inclination of how a mind is exercised. I would lean more to the curious side myself, I think. 

For me, personally, reason is important and I do look for reason in almost everything I do. Even at work, even when we deviate from norms, I need to know what the reason is and how we deviate from it. It makes sense to me to look for reason. But I accept also that it is not enough that reason for something exists, because sometimes those reasons are not good reasons. Logical consistency is not the answer to everything. At work, or in Faith.

That being said, my Faith gives me solace, and comfort, and hope. And that is precious to me. Sometimes it is everything to me. So however the human-organised church fails or doesn’t match the mark, it is not enough to shake my faith. Also I have been indoctrinated enough to have the fear of the Lord instilled in me, so good luck shaking that. However much I sin, I shall never shake that fear off.

There are age-old questions raised about God. Mostly, how does an all-powerful, all-loving God not stop natural calamities and all the cancers and all the fuck ups of this world? Because things like wars, we can reason out and say man inflicted these shits on mankind. An ever growing cancer from the Garden of Eden. But to take just one example, what of the babies who died in the neonatal units of hospitals when Gaza was bombed in 2023? Where was God then?

The get out of jail card for theism is always Free Will. God can’t get rid of the evil without also ridding the world of Free Will embedded in the system. God cannot get rid of much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will. 

The question of whether God’s omnipotence is compatible with the claim that God cannot do the logically impossible is another concern. If God can make 2 + 2 = 5, then what would 2 + 3 equal? If God can make a rock so big that he can’t lift it, exactly how big would that rock be? What people who ask these questions want is something that is no longer itself. Each of these things seems to be absolutely, positively impossible. What they want is magic, probably. Transfiguration, perhaps. And in the vein of McGonagall turning into a cat and less of Jesus becoming radiant in the mountain top. 

There is also the question of whether us free willed creatures could have perfect lives in Heaven in the great Afterlife. Or whether to ensure perfect society, if free will would be removed from us then. Or perhaps in Heaven, the free willed creatures (angels? souls of believers?) always and unfailingly choose right. So there’s free will that can be compatible with perfect living. Technically, possible. But I guess if we get turned into that, we would not be the same as we are now anyway.

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. Or perhaps I’m not asking the right questions. Deep Thought said the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. The only problem was no one ever asked the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe and Everything. Perhaps the Answer is there. We just don’t know it yet. As for me, I’m OK for now with the Answers I have, and the comfort my Faith gives me.

The answer to the titular question, by the way, being all of them, of course, because buildings can’t jump.